Patty on Cooking

Patty the Cook

Patty was not the world’s greatest cook. Cooking for her was for keeping the troops happy and fed. She wasn’t interested in spending time in the kitchen preparing fancy dinners. Her focus in life was on people. She would rather have grabbed something ‘to go’ in order to spend more time with the person she was with than hang out in the kitchen. Which was fine with me, because that meant that spending time with Patty was true ‘time with Patty’ and those are the memories I cherish now.

This does not mean that Patty’s cooking was terrible or barely passable. That is not the case at all! There were things that she did quite well! Our family potato salad comes from her and we don’t do it any other way! I will be sharing that recipe later this month. Another recipe Patty rocked was baked beans. I will share that with you later this month as well. But truly, Patty’s form of cooking was to boil 3 days worth of spaghetti noodles, dump a couple jars of pasta sauce on it, and you have 3 days of ready-to-eat spaghetti for starving teenage boys!! Another meal that Patty loved was tuna noodle casserole. My husband claims they had this so much growing up, I was not allowed to offer it for supper for the first several years of our marriage. He was tuna noodled out! Please keep in mind that Patty was feeding hungry boys on an enlisted soldier’s salary back when they needed food stamps to make it. Back in the 80’s the Army was not paying as well as they do now, so feeding her herd meant the cheapest and easiest mass quantity supply possible. I told her often that I don’t know how she did it, feeding those boys every day. She would just nod her head and tell me it wasn’t always easy.

Patty wasn’t a stick-in-the-mud about her kitchen either. Anyone who felt inclined to take it over and create a meal was welcome to it! My husband learned to enjoy cooking as a young man and she encouraged his desire. She gave him a cookbook that is still in our home today. That cookbook gives a great basic muffin or pancake recipe that have both made me famous to my guests!! So in  a way, Patty is the driving force behind my delightful buttermilk pancakes!

I have actually made this recipe for our dairy free friends and it turned out pretty well!! Both recipes are offered.

Buttermilk Pancakes

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Normal Recipe:

3 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 Tbsp sugar
dash or two salt
2 eggs
6 Tbsp melted butter, cooled
3 cups buttermilk

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Dairy Free:

3 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 Tbsp sugar
dash or two salt
2 egg subsitute (2 eggs worth)
6 Tbsp dairy free margarine, melted and cooled
2- 1/2 cups vanilla Silk (it’s a thinner product, watch batter carefully)

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Blend all the dry ingredients together in your mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whip together the eggs first, then the cooled butter and buttermilk. Pour the wet goods into the mixing bow with the dry goods as the paddle is moving. Keep it low while you are blending at first until the milk won’t slosh. I turn my mixer to medium for a couple minutes until the batter is smooth. I will raise the paddle out of the batter to check for the consistency.

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Some days we like the pancakes fluffy, so my batter will be thicker. Ladle your batter onto a hot, greased griddle. They will be ready to flip when the top of the cooking pancake is dry and has bubbles appearing. Slide your spatula under it in one quick, clean motion and flip. Your golden nummy will be ready in just mintues!

Other days we like to do flapjack style cakes where you can roll the pancake around sausage or jelly rolls style with sugar inside. On these days I add a tablespoon or two of buttermilk at a time till the batter is thinner but NOT runny!

You can also have some fun with these!! I have added our fresh picked, wild Alaska blueberries to the dry goods. I freeze my fresh fruit before adding to the mix, that way they can handle the mixing. If you don’t want to freeze your berries, gently fold the fresh fruit into the prepared batter with a spoon.

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Another option that our kids love is making these chocolate!! You can get that recipe my clicking on the image below. Top these babies with homemade whipping cream and chocolate syrup for a fun treat!

This post is part of a blogging series “Remembering Patty“

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